Saturday, October 17, 2015

Paul Craig Roberts -- The Fall Of The Unipower

The distinguished and knowledgeable international
commentator William Engdahl, in a superb statement, has expressed the view I
gave you that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speech on September 28 at the
70th anniversary of the United Nations changed the balance of power in the
world. Until Putin’s speech the world was intimidated by the Washington Bully.
Resistance to Washington brought swift retribution. In the Middle East and
Africa it brought economic sanctions and military invasions that destroyed entire
countries. In France and other US vassal states it brought multi-billion dollar
confiscations of bank net worth as the price of not following Washington’s
policies toward other countries.

Other countries felt powerless in the face of the
arrogant hegemonic Unipower, which from time to time replied to noncompliance
with threats, such as US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage delivered
to Pakistan, to bomb noncompliant countries “back to the stone age.”http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5369198.stm

President Putin of Russia brought all that to end on
September 28. He stood up before the world in the presence of the overflowing
hubris of the hegemon and belled the cat.

Putin denounced Washington’s threat to the
sovereignty, and thereby the freedom, of peoples and countries. He denounced
the heartless criminality of Washington’s destruction of the lives of millions
of peoples on the basis of nothing other than Washington’s own arrogance. He
denounced the illegality of Washington’s assaults on the sovereignty of other
peoples, and declared that Russia can no longer tolerate this state of affairs
in the world.

Two days later he took over the war in Syria and began
exterminating the Washington financed and equipped Islamic State. Cruise
missiles launched from the Caspian Sea hit ISIL targets with pinpoint accuracy
and showed Washington’s EU vassals that Washington’s ABM system could not
protect them if Europe permitted Washington to force Europe into conflict with
Russia.

Washington’s response was more lies: “the missiles hit
Iran,” said the idiots in Washington. The entire world laughed at the lie.
Washington, some said, is whistling past its empire’s own graveyard.

Putin’s declaration of multi-polarity was seconded by
the President of China, who said in his understated mild way that every country
must participate in shaping the future and not just follow the leadership of
one.

The hegemonic Unipower ceased to exist on September
28.

This is a sea change. It will affect the behavior of
every government. Even some of the craven vassals states, whose “leaders” are
bought-and-paid-for, will move toward a more independent foreign policy.

The remaining danger is the crazed American neoconservatives.
I know many of them. They are completely insane ideologues. This inhuman filth
has controlled the foreign policy of every US government since Clinton’s second
term. They are a danger to all life on earth. Look at the destruction they have
wreaked in the former Yugoslavia, in Ukraine, in Georgia and South Ossetia, in
Africa, in Afghanistan and the Middle East. The American people were too
brainwashed by lies and by political impotence to do anything about it, and
Washington’s vassals in Europe, UK, Canada, Australia, and Japan had to pretend
that this policy of international murder was “bringing freedom and democracy.”

The crazed filth that controls US foreign policy is
capable of defending US hegemony with nuclear weapons. The neoconservatives
must be removed from power, arrested, and put on international trial for their
horrendous war crimes before they defend their hegemony with Armageddon.

Neoconservatives and their allies in the
military/security complex make audacious use of false flag attacks. These evil
people are capable of orchestrating a false flag attack that propels the US and
Russia to war.

The neocons are also capable of plotting Putin’s
assassination. The crazed John McCain, whom idiotic Arizonians keep returning
to the US Senate, has publicly called for Putin’s death, as have other former
federal officials, such as former CIA official Herbert E. Meyer, who publicly
called for Putin’s removal “with a bullet hole in the back of his head.” I am
confident that the neoconservatives are plotting Putin’s assassination with
their Chechen terrorist friends. Unlike the US president, Putin often presents
himself in open situations.

Russia and its President, Vladimir Putin, a little
more than a year ago, in July 2014 were the focus of attention in Europe and
North America, accused, without a shred of forensic evidence, of shooting down
an unarmed civilian Malaysian airliner over eastern Ukraine. The Russians were
deemed out to restore the Soviet Union with their agreement to the popular
referendum of Crimean citizens to annex into the Russian Federation and not
Ukraine. Western sanctions were being thrown at Russia by both Washington and
the EU. People spoke of a new Cold War. Today the picture is changing, and
profoundly. It is Washington that is on the defensive, exposed for the criminal
actions it has been doing in Syria and across the Middle East, including
creating the recent asylum crisis in Germany and large parts of the EU.

As a student of international politics and economics
for most of my adult life, I must say the emotional restraint that Vladimir
Putin and the Russian government have shown against tasteless ad hominem
attacks, from people such as Hillary Clinton who likened Putin to Adolf Hitler,
is remarkable. But more than restraint is required to bring our world from the
brink or some might say, the onset of a World War III. Brilliant and directed
action is essential. Here something extraordinary has taken place in the very
few days since President Vladimir Putin’s September 28, UNGA speech in New
York.

What he said . . .

What Putin said to the UN General Assembly must be
noted to put what he and Russia did in the days immediately following into
clear focus. First of all he made clear what the international law behind the
UN Charter means and that Russia is scrupulously abiding by the Charter in
actions in Syria. Russia, unlike the US, has been formally asked by the
legitimate Syrian government to aid its war against terror.

To the UN delegates and heads of state Putin stated, “The
decisions debated within the UN are either taken in the form of resolutions or
not. As diplomats say, they either pass or they don’t. Any action taken by
circumventing this procedure is illegitimate and constitutes a violation of the
UN Charter and contemporary international law.”

He continued, “We all know that after the end
of the Cold War the world was left with one center of dominance, and those who
found themselves at the top of the pyramid were tempted to think that, since
they are so powerful and exceptional, they know best what needs to be done and
thus they don’t need to reckon with the UN, which, instead of rubber-stamping
the decisions they need, often stands in their way.”

Putin followed this with a clear message to Washington
and NATO governments on the subject of national sovereignty, something anathema
to many who embrace the Nirvana supposed to come from globalization,
homogenization of all to one level: “What is the meaning of state
sovereignty, the term which has been mentioned by our colleagues here?” Putin
rhetorically asked. “It basically means freedom, every person and every
state being free to choose their future. By the way, this brings us to the
issue of the so-called legitimacy of state authorities. You shouldn’t play with
words and manipulate them. In international law, international affairs, every
term has to be clearly defined, transparent and interpreted the same way by one
and all.”

Putin added, “We are all different, and we
should respect that. Nations shouldn’t be forced to all conform to the same
development model that somebody has declared the only appropriate one. We
should all remember the lessons of the past. For example, we remember examples
from our Soviet past, when the Soviet Union exported social experiments,
pushing for changes in other countries for ideological reasons, and this often
led to tragic consequences and caused degradation instead of progress.”

Those few words succinctly point to what is
fundamentally wrong in the international order today. Nations, above all the
one proclaiming herself Sole Superpower, Infallible Hegemon, the USA, have
arrogantly moved after the collapse of the main adversary, the Soviet Union in
1990, to create what can only be called a global totalitarian empire, what
G.H.W. Bush in his September 11, 1991 address to Congress called a New World
Order. I believe with conviction that borders do matter, that respect for
different cultures, different historical experiences is essential in a world of
peace. That is as much true with nations as with individual human beings. We
seem to have forgotten that simple notion amid all the wars of the past
decades. Vladimir Putin reminds us.

Then the Russian president goes to the heart of the
matter. He lays bare the true activities of the Obama Administration in Syria
and the Middle East in arming and training “moderate” Islamist terrorists to
attack Washington’s bête noire, Syria’s duly-elected and recently re-elected
President, Bashar al Assad.

Putin states,“instead of learning from other
people’s mistakes, some prefer to repeat them and continue to export
revolutions, only now these are “democratic” revolutions. Just look at the
situation in the Middle East and Northern Africa…problems have been piling up
for a long time in this region, and people there wanted change. But what was
the actual outcome? Instead of bringing about reforms, aggressive intervention
rashly destroyed government institutions and the local way of life. Instead of
democracy and progress, there is now violence, poverty, social disasters and
total disregard for human rights, including even the right to life.”

Then in a remark addressed to Washington and their NGO
Color Revolutions known as the Arab Spring, Putin pointedly asks, “I’m
urged to ask those who created this situation: do you at least realize now what
you’ve done?“

Putin, without naming it, addresses the US and NATO
role in creating ISIS, noting with precision the curious anomaly that the
sophisticated new US Treasury unit to conduct financial sanctions against
terrorist organizations, has utterly ignored the funding sources of ISIS, their
oil sales facilitated by the Turkish President’s own family to name just one.
The Russian President stated, “the Islamic State itself did not come
out of nowhere. It was initially developed as a weapon against undesirable
secular regimes. Having established control over parts of Syria and Iraq,
Islamic State now aggressively expands into other regions. It seeks dominance
in the Muslim world and beyond…The situation is extremely dangerous. In these
circumstances, it is hypocritical and irresponsible to make declarations about
the threat of terrorism and at the same time turn a blind eye to the channels
used to finance and support terrorists, including revenues from drug
trafficking, the illegal oil trade and the arms trade.

And what Putin is doing . . .

Russia in the last weeks has completely out-maneuvered
the diabolical, and they are diabolical, agenda of the Obama Administration not
only in Syria but also in the entire Middle East and now in the EU with
unleashing the flood of refugees. He openly reached out to invite Obama in
their New York September 30 meeting to cooperate together in defeating ISIS.
Obama stubbornly insisted that first Assad must go, despite the fact that
Christine Wormuth, the Pentagon Undersecretary responsible for the Syrian war,
confirmed Russian statements about Assad’s essential role today in any defeat
of ISIS. She told the US Senate that Assad’s military “still has
considerable strength,”adding, “it’s still the most powerful
military force on the ground. The assessment right now is the regime is not in
imminent danger of falling.”

Now come the howls of protest from neo-con warhawks,
like the ever-ready-for-war Senator John McCain, chairman of the NGO
International Republican Institute of the democratic revolution exporting
US-backed NGO, National Endowment for Democracy. Or we hear flaccid protests
from President Obama. This is because Washington finds itself deeply exposed to
the light of world scrutiny for backing terrorists in Syria against a duly-elected
state leader and government. The US warhawks accuse Russia of hitting “the
moderate opposition” or civilians.

Emperor’s New Clothes . . .

Russia’s Putin is playing the role ever so elegantly,
even gracefully, of the small boy in the Hans Christian Anderson classic fairy
tale from 1837, The Emperor’s New Clothes. The boy stands with his mother amid
thousands of other villagers in the crowd outside the vain Emperor’s palace
balcony, where the disassociated king struts around the balcony naked, thinking
he is wearing a magnificent new suit of clothes. The boy shouts, to the
embarrassment of all servile citizens who pretend his clothes are magnificent,
“Mother, look the Emperor has no clothes!”

What do I mean? In the first four days of precision
bombing of select sites in Syria Russian advanced fighter jets firing Kh-29L
air-to-surface laser-guided missiles that strike targets with a precision less
than two meters, managed to destroy key ISIS command centers, munitions depots
and vital infrastructure. According to the Russian Defense Ministry official
reports, with photos, Su-34 bombers attacked an ISIS special training camp and
munition depot near Al-Tabqa, Ar-Raqqah province,” a critical ISIS outpost
captured in August, 2014 after bitter battles. “As a result of explosion of the
munition depot, the terrorist training camp was completely destroyed,” the
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman stated. Russian Su-25 jets have also
attacked training camp of the Islamic State in the Syrian Idlib, destroying a
workshop for explosive belt production.

Moscow states its air force has “engaged 3 munition,
fuel and armament depots of the illegal armed groups. KAB-500 aviation bombs
detonated the munition and armament,” and they used BETAB-500 concrete-piercing
bombs to destroy four command posts of the ISIS armed groups. The facilities
with terrorists are completely destroyed,” the Moscow spokesman added. Russia’s
aviation conducted 20 flights and carried out 10 airstrikes against facilities
of the Islamic State (ISIL) terrorist group in the past 24 hours. Then Moscow
announced they had also hit key outposts of other terror groups such as the Al
Qaeda-franchise, Al Nusra Front.

These are the so-called “moderates” that McCain and
the Washington warhawks are weeping over. Washington has been creating what it
calls the “New” Syrian Forces (NSF), which they claim is composed of “moderate”
terrorists, euphemistically referred to as “rebels.” Imagine how recruitment
talks go: CIA recruiter, “Mohammed, are you a moderate Islamist? Why yes, my
dear CIA trainer. Please take me, train me and arm me in the fight against the
ruthless dictator Assad and against ISIS. I’m on your side. You can trust me…”

In late September it was reported that Major Anas
Obaid a.k.a. Abu Zayd, on completing his CIA training in Turkey, defected from
the train-and-equip program to join Jabhat al-Nusra (Al Qaeda in Syria)
immediately on entering Syria. Incredibly, US officials admit that Washington
does not track or exercise command-and-control of its Jihadist proxies once
they enter Syria. Abu Zayd’s defection after being trained in advanced warfare
techniques by the US, is typical. Other elements of the New Syrian Forces
directly handed all their weapons to Nusra upon entering Syrian territory at
the town of Atareb at the end of September.

These latest “moderate” defections to join Al Qaeda’s
Al-Nusra Front affiliate in Syria come less than two weeks after Gen. Lloyd
Austin III, head of the US “war against ISIS,” during a Senate Armed Services
Committee hearing on Syria, admitted that the US military program that intended
produce 5,400 trained fighters a year has so far only resulted in “four or
five” who still remain on the ground and active in combat. The rest have all
joined ISIS or Al Nusra Front of Al Qaeda, the US-backed “moderate opposition”
to ISIL.

What the successful Russian precision airstrikes have
done is expose in all its ugly nakedness the Emperor’s New Clothes. For more
than one year, the Obama Administration claims it has committed the most
awesome airpower on the planet allegedly to destroy ISIS, which has been
described as a “ragtag band of militants running around the desert in
basketball shoes.”

Curiously, until last week, ISIS has only expanded its
web of power in Syria and Iraq under US bombings. Now, within 72 hours, the
Russian military, launching only 60 bombing runs in 72 hours, hitting more than
50 ISIS targets, has brought the ISIS combatants into what the Russian Defense
Ministry spokesman described as a state of “panic” where more than 600 have
deserted. And, according to Moscow, the fight is only beginning, expected, they
say to last three to four months.

The Obama Administration has been training terrorists
of Al Qaeda/Al Nusra, allegedly to fight ISIS, much like the disgraced General
David Petraeus did in Iraq and Afghanistan along with Obama’s special ISIS
coordinator, the just-resigned General John Allen. The US-trained “moderate”
terrorists were being readied, it’s now clear to all the world, in reality, to
battle Assad and open the way for a Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Syria and a
real plunge into darkness for the world if that were to succeed.

Now, with the truth in the open, exposed by the
remarkable successes of a handful of Russian fighter jets in four days against
ISIS, accomplishing more than the US “anti-ISIS coalition” in more than one
year, it is clear to the world Washington has been playing a dirty double game.

Now that hypocritical Obama Administration mask has
been blown off with the precision hit of a Russian laser-guided Kh-29L missile.
As German and other EU governments have admitted, much to the strong objection
of Washington, Putin has demonstrated that Russia is the essential part of any
peaceful resolution of the Syria war. That in turn has a huge bearing on the
current asylum-seeker crisis in Germany and other parts of the EU. It also has
a huge bearing on prospects for world peace. The Norwegian Parliament’s Nobel
Peace Prize Committee, rather than consider John Kerry, might consider Vladimir
Putin and Russian Defense Minister, Sergey Shoygu, for the prize.

F.
William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a
degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author
on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Easte

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books areThe Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West